The reliably upbeat Lakers’ play-by-play man for Spectrum SportsNet apparently had seen enough as the team stumbled into halftime against the Clippers last Tuesday night trailing 70-40, punctuated by an uncontested 3-point basket on the final play before the first-half buzzer.

“And they give Chris Paul a wide-open look … A WIDE … OPEN … LOOK … Nobody picked up Chris Paul. NOBODY picked up the ball … And that ends an AWFUL half for the Lakers …”

Three nights later, Stu Lantz also found a reason to raise his voice.

The remarkably low-key analyst saw Jordan Clarkson hit a 3-point shot, giving him a career-best 35 points, and lifting the Lakers to a 114-109 lead over Minnesota on Friday night.

“The young guys are having some fun! It’s nice to see them with smiles on their face, playing as hard as they possibly can … you look up at the scoreboard and they’ve got themselves a nice little cushion … a five-point lead in OT with 3:31 to play, they’ll take it!”

Part of a carnival atmosphere outside Staples Center on Friday to celebrate Shaquille O’Neal’s statue unveiling included various game booths and a Ferris Wheel that stood almost as tall the arena roof.

There was no need to bring in a roller coaster. There’s one operating nightly inside the arena, one the Spectrum SportsNet crew rides with so much regularity, they’ve become Dramamine tolerant.

But as the Lakers slosh through to the conclusion of their fourth straight non-playoff losing season, seven years removed from their last championship that must feel like decades ago, the thing that has remained a non-negotiable part of the telecast for all of those in front of and behind the camera is a standard mode of operation established by Chick Hearn.

During a Hall of Fame broadcasting run with the franchise from the early 1960s right up until his passing in 2002, Hearn may have provided his own brand of Showtime behind the mic, but truth-telling was at the core through words, pictures and actions.

“There may not be a million people watching games on a night-to-night basis,” Macdonald, the third play-by-play man to do Lakers games since Hearn, said prior to Friday’s broadcast, “but there are millions of people, worldwide, who want to know what’s going on with the team each game. You can’t BS Lakers fans. Chick not only set the standard, but that’s the way it should be done anyway.”

The philosophy goes all the way to the top with game producer Mark Shah, whose Lakers coverage with Macdonald and Lantz goes years back to Fox Sports West and the launch of SportsNet in 2012.

“I may initially approach it through the mentality of a Lakers fan, but you’ve really got to bring it 50/50, the way Stu and Bill bring it, because that’s how Chick wanted the show to be,” Shah said. “You can’t sugar coat it. You have to be truthful and faithful to the fans. And if we do that, then we’re always in a good spot.”

Which arches into the subjective storyline of tanking.

Not that the SportsNet group, with its decades of professionalism invested in each telecast, can be accused of mailing in a broadcast, or performing to the level of the team they cover. Their experience with a camera crew alone that has covered Olympics, World Series and Super Bowls gives Shah what he believes measures up “against anybody given the resources we have … we have an unbelievably exceptional crew and we’re very lucky to have them.”

But one of the things Lakers’ radio play-by-play man John Ireland confronts perhaps on a daily basis as he co-hosts the afternoon sports talk show on the team’s ESPN 710-AM affiliate is a dreadfully prevailing thought that, while the team may want to give its younger players more productive minutes as a way to be better themselves for the future, the current goal of finishing among the league’s worst teams record-wise has to be a priority as well because the benefits come draft time.

“It’s a weird thing,” Macdonald said. “The most common-sense thing is players aren’t trying to lose games because that puts them at risk of having their jobs taken by someone else. Can a front-office put certain guys on the floor and shut other guys down (to achieve a certain goal)? Well, maybe.

“You don’t really have to ask whether or not they’re tanking. The reality is, you put it out there: We show the inverse standings. They have the second-worst record in the league. They’re almost guaranteed to have a bottom three spot before the lottery.

“Lakers fans are already very opinionated – it’s probably the most opinionated fan base in the whole NBA. They are frighteningly opinionated. There is also more writers covering our team than anyone out there. There is so much information to process. And it’s because everyone loves them so much and are so invested. So really, you don’t have to say they’re tanking. The facts speak for themselves.”

Shah says that from his vantage point in the production truck working with director Jerry Weinstein, “I don’t think there’s any intentional tank going on. What happens is with a lot of young teams late in a game, they don’t know how to win and the veteran teams have it figured out. You can see the Lakers compete the other night with Cleveland and play them tough, but you also knew that Cleveland knew when it could turn it on and pull away. I believe these guys are trying. The coaching staff feels there is effort.”

By nature, Macdonald wouldn’t even know how to stop caring about his job, or the team, in any way, shape or form.

While this may not be the most challenging of his seasons since coming on full time in 2011 – last year’s 17-win output seems to be a consensus winner, despite having Kobe Bryant’s farewell tour to cover – Macdonald does not need infusions of Red Bull and vodka to get him through games in the same way those watching at home may require.

“Would it be great if we were winning and everyone was happy? Sure, but this losing doesn’t take any physical toll on me,” said the 59-year-old who eight years ago went through prostate cancer recovery.

“It’s hard to call loss after loss, and see bad basketball, and it’s hard to call a blowout. No team in league history has more 35-point losses in a season than this one (including a franchise-record 49-point loss to Dallas in January). We all know that. But no one here mails it in because you owe it to the fans.

“And, if you really do it for anyone, you do it for Chick and his memory. He brought it every night.”

ASURING MEDIA MAYHEM

WHAT SMOKES

* Fox sends out its usually stellar crew of Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip, Jeff Gordon and Larry McReynolds to call today’s/Sunday’s Auto Club 400 in Fontana (Channel 11, 12:30 p.m.), with the pre-race at noon, handled by Chris Myers, Michael and Darrell Waltrip and Gordon). Jamie Little, Vince Welch and Matt Yocum are also in the pits.

* One of the ways NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the league will go forward with enhancing the TV game experience is a conscious reorganization of commercial blocks that interrupt the flow of play. Currently, the league allows for five commercials breaks in the first, third and fourth quarters, and six in the second quarter. During some media interviews this week, Goodell said the new plan will go with four breaks each quarter, but add 30 seconds to each of them, and then experiment with the auto racing-friendly double-box screen, especially during replay reviews. They will also cut down on commercial stoppages before and after kickoffs.

WHAT CHOKES

*The noise around something called BIG3, a 3-on-3 basketball league with rapper/actor Ice Cube as the showrunner, has wormed its way into a TV deal with FS1 to air on Monday nights this summer (on a delayed basis), using former NBA players such as Allen Iverson, Chauncey Billups and others playing in a yet-to-be-determined format. “Any time you’re a first-year league, and you’re able to sign with a broadcast partner like Fox, I think it speaks volumes to the players we have and to what this product is going to be on the court,” said commissioner Roger Mason Jr. It also speak more about the desperate state of FS1 to throw anything up on its menu. If watching Iverson play today is the answer, advertisers should be lining up to push muscle-pain cures, quick-fix pharmaceuticals and medic alert devices.

Tom Hoffarth is a freelancer. He had been with the Daily News/Southern California News Group since 1992 as a general assignment sports reporter, columnist and specialist in the sports media. He has been honored by the Associated Press for sports columnists and honored by the Southern California Sports Broadcasters Association for his career work. His favorite sportscaster of all time: Vin Scully, for professional and personal reasons. He considers watching Zenyatta win the Breeders' Cup 2009 Classic to be the most memorable sporting event he has covered in his career. Go figure that.

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